


No Man Returns From War

by misreall



Category: Kong: Skull Island (2017), Tom Hiddleston Fandom
Genre: 70s music, Angst, Caretaking, Cigarettes, Class Differences, Daddy Kink, Dancing, Dom/sub, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Heartbreak, Kissing, Light Bondage, Marijuana, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Possibly Unrequited Love, Reunion Sex, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Self-Acceptance, Sex, Spanking, Vietnam War, War, more tags to come?, self-realization, sex with professionals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-08-20 08:42:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20225020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall
Summary: James Conrad has always felt hollow, an empty man playing the role of a hero, a gentleman, even a lover.  Once, before he left for war, he came close to finding his true self with a young woman that he might have loved.  Rather than facing who that man might be, he left her behind, never planning on seeing her again.  But his time in Viet Nam, and even more so what he learns on Skull Island, shows him that you cannot run from yourself.  Now he needs to go back, to make amends.





	1. Men Go To War Looking For Something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caffiend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffiend/gifts).

> Happy Birthday to my beautiful, beloved beta. Caff, this is all of the stuff I don't normally do, so you know I love you!

The first time James Conrad knew himself was not in war, but in the bed of an aging bar girl in Saigon, between one battle and the next.

Conrad had gone into the army not only due to his family’s long history of service, but because he had been promised by recruiters, lifer staff sergeants, indeed by the entire written history of men and war that he would find out who he was by doing so. 

It did not surprise him that it had been a lie, but he’d hoped. 

Certainly the maddening heat of the Vietnamese jungle, pressing like a hair-shirt under the weight of his uniform, the rifle on his back, the unforgiving boots, the smell of green untainted by man, and the sounds and acrid musks of the animals that he could not sense but could feel nonetheless, had moved him in a way that he had no words for, had drawn him and compelled him like nothing ever had. Yet that wilderness insisted, just as it had in the mountains of Wales and the forests of Scotland, that he learn about  _ it, _ its secrets and dangers, not about himself.

As he sought downed pilots, after working his way through thicks of trees and vines, he would climb into the canopy to sleep, knowing the heights were safer from both animals and the Cong, James would stare at the bits of sky he could see between the leaves and sometimes wonder if there were no him to be known. 

A privileged up-bringing, with a doting mother and appropriately annoying sisters, a university education, years of training in the military to have the honor of saving better men than himself, all had left him a hollow man, straight from an Eliot poem. 

Perhaps it was due to that education and training which had led him to this beautiful place and given him a sort of effete at worst, artistic at best, ability to appreciate it, but at the same time had never convinced him that he was anything other than a body formed for action and worth nothing more. 

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, his mother’s favorite writer, he felt himself to be a man-shaped space with no there, there. 

If it had not been for a Yank, some Lieutenant Ferris, a Huey pilot down somewhere near the Cambodian border with a broken leg and a semi-functioning radio who was waiting for him, and a memory of a harassed looking girl holding a tray of pint glasses, her eyes tired, looking at him as if he might have the answers, Conrad might very well that day have unbuckled the harness holding him in place in the arms of the trees and plunged to the ground, knowing nothing would be lost.

Three weeks later, at Mimi's Bar on Boulevard Nguyen Hue, James went home with one of the bar girls. 

Mimi’s was famous for the girls there being the most beautiful and talented. In his time in Viet Nam, Conrad had rarely indulged. He cast no judgement on the girls or the men who they entertained. People needed money, they needed to fuck, they needed the lie of closeness, they needed things to make them forget. 

Yet always the sight of a girl at a bar made him remember things that were both upsetting and worth remembering. Unforgettable things, were he being honest. So to forget the war and the roaring silence of the jungle when the enemy was near, and the men he had failed to save, unlike Lieutenant Thomas Ferris, the Huey pilot who was one of the lucky ones, he lost himself here by drinking - drinking and gambling and taking the money of less talented men.

But on that night, that hot even for Saigon night, where it was like you could  _ see _ the air moving in front of you as you walked through waves of humidity, car exhaust, and cigarette smoke, he’d sat at the bar and bought champagne, or more surely, sparkling water with bitters for color, for a girl who on closer look was far from a girl though still breathtakingly lovely. 

Conrad let himself get drunk on the Islay scotch that somehow the proprietor was still able to get his hands on. Another mystery of the black market, he thought, nodding for another ruinously expensive drink.

Her English was excellent, with a soft touch of the Parisianne to it, meaning she had probably come from one of the formerly wealthy and powerful families that had mostly been killed or had fled earlier in the war. Certainly it was far better than his stilted, un-charmingly accented Vietnamese.

They spoke a little French together, about singers and food. She told him the best place to still get good bread in the city. 

Her name was Madeleine and also Nhung, she confided in him coyly, whispering. To show that she liked him. That she trusted him. That she thought he was different than the other men who came to Mimi’s.

James knew it was a part of her act, but she was very, very good at it. He had no doubts that she knew her business as well or better than he knew his. That she had read him entirely in that moment he came in the door. That she saw that he needed to see himself as apart. That he tried to be what passed for a gentleman in this benighted age. That he was empty.

It was easy to go back to her little apartment, just a block away, so convenient, wasn’t it? She asked, as she kept turning back to smile at him, to flirt, as he followed her, watching the neon from the other, nastier bars turned her white mini skirt and matching knee-boots pink, then green, then blue, then back again. 

The sway of her lovely, rather full ass as she climbed up and up the old, badly painted stairs, enticed him. For a moment he imagined how sweet it would look bare, over his knee, wiggling and ready for the firm bounce of his hand. 

His hand would be as big as the whole of it, both adorable sides of that little arse.

Laughing to himself, he thought, “No, her  _ derrière _ . French, after all.”

Wiping a hand down his face, Conrad shook his head. He was drunker than he thought, having despicable thoughts such as that.

Her flat was the tiny, neat thing he expected, a clash of styles. Remnants of a Limoges dinner service on the table, a beaded curtain in psychedelic colors in lieu of a bedroom door, a faded, vastly too large Persian rug, and a pink turntable where she put on a record by a Vietnamese band playing songs by The Grass Roots. 

The bed took up most of the little bedroom and Conrad was surprised that it was long enough for him. Nhung bit her lip and danced in front of him, slowly unzipping her dress, letting it fall. “Should I undress you, daddy?” she asked, kneeling at his feet and starting to unlace his boot, her eyes on his.

Her words, playful and knowing, were like a punch to the heart. Something that could kill or revive. 

James felt his soul shy from them, revulsed by her, by himself, even as his cock was hard enough to split, harder than it had been with any woman since Sheila.

_ She had been so tired that last time, as he walked out of the pub with little more than a goodbye over his shoulder, her arm practically trembling as she helped her father replace the cask, a look like she wanted to follow him, to demand more. _

“No,” he stood, looking down, so far down at the beautiful woman who was playing a role she thought he wanted, “get up.” The words shook a little, as did his hands that longed to grip her shining hair, flipped out and so stylish. Use it to direct her, to give her instruction, to pull and then to pet and soothe, perhaps whilst she sat upon his lap.

“Now,” he added.

She stood, still remaining a demure look as he quickly stripped, motioning her to do the same. More slowly but with still that coy charm, she did so and stood as if waiting for his next order.

“Lay down. Please,” he tried to sound nonchalant, but his voice trembled. Call me daddy again, he wanted to beg, to insist, to require. Instead he sat beside her prone body and put a hand between her legs, admiring her lovely form whilst noting more evidence that she was older, perhaps much, than she seemed. Though not terribly wet, she was at least somewhat ready. 

Conrad put the pads of two fingers on her clit, a little of the wet from her dampening them, and began to massage, leaning forward to lick a peaked and pretty nipple. Her eyes were wide with a little genuine surprise and an acted girlishness. She began to circle her hips, head thrown back. “ _ S'il te plaît, papa, s'il te plaît ... baise-moi _ .” 

Over and over.

Hypnotized, he found himself unable to stop rubbing her clit, just staring at her faux transported face, wanting her to keep moaning and begging. He loved the begging. He slowed and she sounded more desperate, knowing what he wanted. Knowing what he needed and denied and lied to himself about over and over, as if he could make a lie real by force of will. 

“ _ Không, daddy ... làm ơn, thêm nữa .. _ .”

The record ended and another dropped from the spindle. The Hollies.

The dissonance of the needle falling onto the vinyl woke him. He spread her legs and settled between them, covering her mouth with his wet hand, not wanting to hear any more.

Afterwards he left all of the American dollars he had on him on an orange plastic cutting board beside her sink. 

He looked around the small flat, how ragged it was, though showing Nhung’s efforts to keep up standards. All was clean and mended where it could be. A photo of her, probably when she was truly young, dressed in a chic suit with two proud looking older Vietnamese, probably her parents, in what looked to be a lavish sitting room, hung in pride of place one wall, a paper scroll that he could not read beside it.

Suddenly he was filled with a painful, sweet need to go back in and check on her, to cover her with a blanket, to be certain that there was food in her cupboards, to assure himself that the other men she saw for her business never mistreated her.

_ Sheila had almost always been able to evade the grasping hands and unwanted pats of the pub goers, and when she didn’t she laughed it off, but he knew her laugh was a lie. That she felt dirty. That she was hurt and could do nothing about it. _

Instead, he counted the dong he had and then took himself to a much worse bar and drank much worse whisky until dawn.

The next day he put in to go back into the field and in a few days, as he planned to be dropped near Long Khánh, Conrad told himself that he could not even remember what about the encounter had bothered him so much.

Probably the good scotch, then afterwards drinking so much trash, he told himself.

Years later, missions later, after the war, leaving the service and trying to lose himself finally and for good in bars and dangerous company, in drink and yes, other girls, though ones that he shared nothing other than business with, he was approached by two Americans, not military, but not not military exactly.

They offered him too much money to help them do something foolish. Something that would finally get him killed.

He thought of Sheila. 

He asked for more money, much more. Enough to send her, to maybe get her free from her father, from the pub, from the town she hated and loved and wanted to leave. 

Enough to make himself feel less guilty. 

Readying himself to go back into the jungle with a shave, a haircut, and a large envelope of cash pressed into the hand of one of the few British officers still there to be evacuated that he trusted to get to the girl he’d left behind.

After Skull Island, after Kong, Conrad looked at himself in the mirror on the ship and saw himself for the first time. 

He thought about the last three days, and all of the empty days before, and he knew where he had failed. How he had failed. 

He needed to go home.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. You’d Be Surprised How Long People Wait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conrad returns to England and the woman he left behind, uncertain of what to expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a Brit, so here's hoping this doesn't sound idiotic. Also, remember, the 70s were really, REALLY different from now.

Sheila stepped outside to breathe and stare at the sky. Several of the regular lads - most of them old enough to be her father but still always  _ the lads _ \- were out on the pavement, pints in hand, cigarettes burning away in their free mitts. 

The lads hated payday night, when The White Mare swelled with punters who only came that every other Friday, clogging up the pub, blocking the bar, playing rock and roll on the Wurlitzer. Even through the drunken noise and the closed door, Sheila could hear Sweet playing, turned up to fight the sound of the full house.

“... _ Way past one, and feeling alright _

_ 'Cause with little Willy round they can last all night _

_ Hey down, stay down, stay down down _

_ 'Cause little Willy, Willy won't go home _ …”

A chorus of rough, discordant voices sang along with the chorus, earning disgusted head-shakes from the lads. Sheila could have reminded them of the nights without number when they’d all sung, maudlin and drunk as lords, along with Sinatra or Johnny Ray, but she was  _ their _ good girl, Bernard’s Sheila who they’d all known from when she was tyke, from when she was so little she could barely see over the bar and her dad had brought her to work when she wasn’t in school, colouring in the back booth, then doing homework when she was older.

She’d poured her first pint at eleven, for Dougie Burne, who was standing there with the rest of the old roosters who didn’t like their barnyard being filled with all of the young cocks of the walk with their shaggy, girl’s hair, high boots, and tight trousers. 

“Don’t worry, lads, you know that after tomorrow we’ll have a fortnight’s peace,” she consoled them as she stepped away from the noise to sit in the little square of the village green. 

“Sure it will, my girl,” Tommy Jones nodded, “and we can have you all back to ourselves,” he added with a broad wink.

All of the lads laughed.

Sheila hated payday as much as the lads, but unlike them she knew that the flood of money that came in those days kept the pub running. 

The quiet and cool of the square, the smell of the grass just coming up as spring started to finally show her face, the now and then the sound of a radio from a passing car, was both comfortable and lonely. If she’d worn other shoes she’d have slipped them off to run her toes through the grass, but she’d worn her high boots because the factory boys like them.

During was a nearly dead village when the concrete factory opened. All of those ugly, Brutalist buildings that were just the fashion in town and up north needed boatloads of the stuff, and young men followed those jobs. Most of them went to Cheltenham for the disco but enough of them wanted to get pissed without driving the bad roads to fill The Mare and the Queen’s Head, the last two of the old places from when this was a proper market town.

There was a part of Sheila - a part she tried to not listen to - that cursed that damned factory for opening If it hadn’t opened just before Bernard died she’d have been able to close the pub then.

Now that there was money coming in, maybe she could sell up. Go somewhere. 

London maybe. If she were willing to take the chance. 

Oxford. Closer and there was always work there.

No, she shook her head, lighting a fag. Not Oxford. Too many memories for the few days she’d ever spent there. Oxford was for her the most haunted ground on this haunted little island. 

Maybe Canada.

There was another roar of laughter from the knot of aging fellas. She sighed. But if she closed up what would happen to the lads? They’d never take to another owner. The Hughes had owned The Mare from the time of the Restoration. No one else could pour a pint like one of the Hughes. No one else had it written into their blood and bones just how to counsel or council or placate a local man when his life was not as it should be. If she left The Mare they would all just drift off to nights in front of the telly and boredom and loneliness. 

Except Joe Caine. He and his wife were still very fond.

Sheila wondered what that was like. To have someone to go home to. Someone you were actually glad to see when you were so tired you couldn’t barely make the stairs. 

Stubbing out her smoke, she noticed a sports car, something small and zippy, pull up near the pub and park. Much nicer than anything she’d seen local. The managers from the factory and the few still wealthy families who had estates in the area didn’t drive fast cars, preferring staid, German sedans and the like, or old British models. 

Even from across the square, she could see the driver was a blonde woman, probably young and pretty based on the confident way she moved. From the passenger side a tall man unfolded himself. The woman said something to him and he turned towards her.

Sheila stood up, not planning to or wanting to, unable to stop herself.

_ No. Don’t be stupid _ , she thought to herself. It wasn’t him. He was long dead in an Asian jungle, a bullet through his head. Or he was married to some posh, elegant woman, one of those girls he’d known at uni, or the daughter of a friend of one of his rich boy families. 

Besides which, _ he _ had been a long, spindly drink of water topped with unruly blond curls. Her father and the lads had called him The Dandelion. 

This fellow, in his suit, was broad shouldered and lean. No one she could know.

The blonde went ahead of him into the Mare, and he stopped to share a few words with the lads. There were hands shook and backs slapped and grief clearly given. She offered up a silent prayer that none of the lads would point to where she was sitting by herself in the empty, dark green. That would be too much for her little bit of pride to stand.

Sheila willed herself to sit back down, unsnap the top of her cigarette packet holder, take one out, tapping it carefully on the arm of the bench as she watched him walk into the pub.  _ Her _ fucking pub. 

Ten years. He’d walked out ten years before with barely a wave, and then one note sent that he had joined the service like his family had always expected and he was going to Scotland for special training. 

That she shouldn’t wait. 

She hadn’t. She’d married the first boy that had married her, Barry who she’d gone to school with, who had a sweet nature and had been coddled so badly by his mum and his gran that he couldn’t even make his own tea, let alone help her around the flat when she was tired from a long day carrying pints and smiling at everyone across the bar from her, even if they didn’t deserve it. They’d been happy to have him back when she’d sent him home after little more than a year.

He still came in now and then for a pint, a little sad and uncertain as to why Sheila had divorced him. They had been mates, hadn’t they? 

She didn’t know how to tell him she didn’t want a mate. Or a grown manchild. She always brought him a drink and told him it wasn’t him, it was her, which his mum confirmed to him as well.

It wasn’t a lie. It was her. She knew she shouldn’t have married poor, helpless Barry. For though she knew better she couldn’t really be his wife, even should he have been perfect. Even if she had actually loved him. Because she was waiting for another man. 

She’d been waiting for James Bloody Conrad since the day he left and now he was back.

“I like it,” Weaver said, sitting back on the rickety wooden bench, sipping a pink gin with a curious look on her face, as if she were uncertain about liking the gin as much as she liked the pub. 

They had been lucky to get the booth, so busy was The White Mare that night, packed with merry young hooligans, filled with piss and cash and now cider on payday, singing off-key and vainly showing off their newly bought, working class glam attire.

They moved easily through the crowd, that had parted quickly for both his size and the sight of his Savile Row suit, an anomaly in this place. They had shifted even more readily for Weaver’s toothpaste bright, so American smile.

There were few changes that he could see, save that the pub, like most of Britain had gone browner and greyer whilst he had been away, shunning the dayglo splendor and optimism of the sixties.

The shutters on the front windows had been painted deep blue, replacing the chipped black lacquer. 

There were a new set up of taps at the bar,so in addition to the traditional draught pulls of local ale one could now get crap lagers like Watney’s Red Barrel.

On the wall beside the bar there was a framed photo of Bernard, white haired but otherwise no different than Conrad remembered him, with a glass raised. There was a little brass plaque at the bottom of the frame:

_ Bernard Hughes, Publican, Father, Friend _

_ 1919 - 1970 _

He hadn’t known, of course. For most of 1970 he’d been so deep in country he hadn’t even heard the Beatles had broken up until 1971, but he still felt damned guilty. Bernard had liked him, against all logic, trusted him with his only, much beloved child, even though he shouldn’t have. Conrad would have thought a life-long pub owner should have seen right through to his empty core. Yet like many others Bernard had been fooled by his good accent and public school manners.

The pub-goers clearly liked Weaver being there. The place was mostly given over to working class young men, with only a few women amongst them, and those few already clearly spoken for. None of them as pretty and lively or nearly as confident as Mason. He knew that if had not been at the table with her she’d be inundated with drinks and questionable flirtation. 

Even though Mason was more than capable of taking care of herself, even if things got physical, he still shifted himself subtly to place his body more clearly between her and the hungry eyes of the boys at the next table. 

The stale smell of spilled lager and old smoke brought back a memory, long forgotten. It was a few months after he’d first started coming here, taking that hour long drive from Oxford, first with his friends, liking that it was a cheap place to drink and far enough that they didn’t run into anyone they knew. After a while, he was coming by himself every few days.

One of those nights, not long after Sheila had let him kiss her for the first time, one of the other customers, some man that wasn’t one of the lads, had put his hand under her skirt when she was putting drinks on the table next to his.

Not a single drop sloshed from a single pint, she was so used to being prodded and pinched and groped.

A rage - ancient, red, proprietary - overcame him and though the other man was a big, hulking country bastard with hands like boxing gloves and arms bigger around than James’s legs, he had him on the ground, methodically punching him and spitting curses in his face before he could be pulled back.

His hands ached at the memory of it. 

The look on Sheila’s face… the shock that anyone would think to defend her turning to pride that he had. 

The memory of it made him hard.

“I do, too.” He always had liked the pub, not only for Sheila’s sake. It was homey, a little tired, very comfortable, everything a country pub should be. The old flagstone floor always had a patient dog lying somewhere on it. Even the rowdy, younger crowd there now couldn’t change its bones. 

“So is she here?” 

Conrad sighed. On the drive up from London he’d told Weaver more than he’d planned about why he was going to the Cotswolds. Nerves, he supposed, nerves and knowing that he could tell Weaver anything and she wouldn’t judge. She had been honest with him, in the months since Skull Island, since Monarch. He had never experienced the comradery of battle before Mason, and it had been years since anything made him nervous.

Terror,  _ that _ he’d felt over and over in the ten years since his last time in the White Mare, terror, dread, and loathing. But nerves? Only Sheila ever made him nervous. 

Because jungle warfare, criminals in bars, and mythic monsters could only kill him. Sheila could destroy him.

He nodded, “In the green. I imagine she’ll be back in before long.” He had felt her there, an unscratchable itch, a phantom out of the corner of his eye, as soon as he had gotten out of Weaver’s ridiculous auto. If she thought she was taking that frivolous, putt-putt motorcar into the Highlands she had another think coming.

The door opened and Sheila walked in, giving him the first good look at her in ten years.

She’d grown her hair a bit. No longer in the stick straight style of the 60s, it now hung softly around her face in loose, reddish waves. Her face was still pretty, with her full, soft mouth and an elegant nose and long neck that implied one of her ancestresses might have had it on with one of the local gentry once upon a time. 

The weariness around her blue eyes, the lines around that lush mouth, and the way she refused to look towards his table, twisted in his gut. 

As soon as she was back in drink orders started being shouted towards her, even though there was a waitress working the floor and a man behind the bar. 

He watched her as she worked. Everyone wanted Sheila to serve them. Practically born in the pub, she had the prettiest smile, the quickest comebacks and set downs for the flirts, knew everyone’s name, what they wanted before they could even ask for another. 

“She’s sexy, Conrad. If things don’t work out give her my number,” Mason said, finishing her drink. 

“I’d have to kill you, Weaver. Sorry.”

She shrugged, standing up, “Sure you won’t change your mind? Monarch still wants you to go  _ you-know-where _ with me.” She was pointing upwards, as if Loch Ness were in the upstairs flat. “You know you want to know…”

“I told them, once I have my house in order I’ll be in touch. Don’t worry, from what we’ve seen there are plenty of other monsters out there for us to chase. Run along now. Take some pictures - proper pictures.”

Weaver gave him a mocking salute, “Good hunting, Captain.” On her way out, she stopped to lean over the momentarily quiet jukebox - to the appreciation of much of the pub - finally putting in a 5p and punching three numbers with a pointed smile and a thumbs up back at him.

“ _ Oh, oh, oh, _

_ Do doo, do doo, do doo, do doo _

_ You will or either you won't now _

_ It's up to you I've had my say _

_ So truly love do love me completely _

_ Hey come on, come on come my way.. _ .”

It  _ is  _ up to you, Sheila, Conrad thought, signaling the other waitress for another ale, settling back to wait.

The lads and the boys both knew better than to push closing time. Sheila had no sense of humor when it came to clearing everyone out. The few newcomers begged for a lock in and were dragged out of the door by tipsy comrades who knew that whining about a last round was the best way to get barred from The White Mare. 

The last song of the night had just started, “When you turn on your smile / I feel my heart go wild / I'm like a child with a brand new toy / And I get the sweetest fee-” 

Sheila flipped the switch, turning it off, waving off the groans, “Time, ladies and gentlemen, finish them up!” she called, motioning to Carla, her Friday night girl, to start clearing glasses and ignoring a chorus of mostly good natured groans.

Ignoring Jimmy.

_ Christ, no,  _ she thought. _ Not Jimmy anymore _ . 

Jimmy had been a pretty boy, all colty arms and legs and a big features that didn't fit his narrow face, and a surprising, man’s voice - resonant, deep, and very well bred. 

Sheila’s pretty, posh schoolboy, Bernard had called Jimmy even to his face, though he hadn’t minded his daughter walking out with a boy with prospects rather than one of the local fellows. After all, he’d paid for her to have two years at Gloucestershire Arts for better prospects, hadn’t he?

This man - this man she  _ didn’t _ know, she told herself, was James.

_ Liar _ , she hissed at her own folly, _ you know him _ .  _ You’d know him anywhere, always _ .

This man was James, and James was beautiful. Not just in the perfection of his body, in the fairytale handsomeness of his aristocrat’s features, but in every motion of them both. The calm way he took in all things with an awareness that nothing could happen that he would not be able to handle with ease. The grace of how he turned his arm to look at his watch and then stretch it over the back of the booth seat that the gorgeous blonde had left empty.

He watched her too. 

In fact, Sheila was certain that even as he scanned the rest of the room, in some peculiar way his gaze never left her.

When Owen had stepped from behind the bar to lock the door behind the last straggler, she saw him notice James, still sitting in his booth. No longer lounging, he had both hands cupped around the empty pint glass he was staring into. 

Owen started towards him, frowning, but Sheila waved him off, “That’s enough for tonight, the both of you. I’m knackered. I’ll get Jeanne to help me scrub up in the morning. Owen, make sure Carla gets to her car, alright?”

_ My but how normal I sound, _ Sheila thought.

Owen and Carla both looked concerned, but they trusted her to know her business. Sheila emptied ashtrays and James continued to look into his empty glass while they gathered their coats. She locked them out and went back to the bar, her body suddenly ice cold.

Most of the liquor in the place was gin and some cheapish scotches, but Bernard had always kept a few good bottles on hand just in case. With numb hands, Sheila found a dusty bottle of Napoleon brandy, pouring herself a tot in a tall gin glass.

“Want one? Or another pint? On the house of course,” she asked, her voice still normal as Sunday. “I’ve never hated a man enough to send him out into a cold night without a final dram.”

James stood, and stood. Christ he was a tall bastard. He’d been that before, of course, but his bearing was different now. Before he had walked with a bit of that stoop shouldered deference that tall boys had, as if embarrassed for taking up so much room. 

No longer. He walked tall as one of those ancient kings he was probably related to if you followed the Conrad family back far enough. Or his mother’s family. She was fancy, too.

“I’m good,” he answered, his voice so very soft. Then, “Do you hate me? I shouldn’t blame you if you did. I have, for years now.”

They were only separated by the bar, old, scarred oak that had allegedly been felled by one of  _ her _ ancestors after coming back from war and deciding that farming was for fools, that a man could never go poor by supplying strong drink to other men. 

“Who was the woman? She’s quite pretty. More than pretty.”

He smelled like heaven. His suit was impeccable, conservative grey but fashionable. His shoes had gleamed as they clicked across the flagstones.

Sheila told herself to throw a drink in his face, even if he didn’t want one.

“A friend. A good friend. Someone I… work with now, I suppose. Nothing more. Do you hate me?” He asked again, his tone implying an order. Implying that she had no choice but to answer him.

She told herself to scream at him like the worst sort of shrew, that he deserved the bollocking of his young life and then to be shown the pavement or maybe the flat of her hand.

She finished her drink, walking around the bar on still, unsteady legs.

He turned towards her. Every one of their movements clear and framed in her mind, like she was looking at a series of pictures. His legs were spread, his arms were loose at his sides, and he looked braced for a blow.

An ache, terrible and very sweet, spread over her skin, made her heart thud with effort, made her go wet. 

“No, Daddy. I don’t hate you.” Her voice was broken and clotted with all of the tears she had not shed over him for a decade.

James closed his eyes, inhaling, “Thank christ,” he breathed.

One of his hands snarled her hair, pulling her head back, the other grabbed the front of her jumper, pulling her against his body. For a moment he just stared at her, breathing so hard, as if he had just run and run, his hot breath scalding her, and her toes barely felt the floor, her mouth was open and waiting.

“Put your hands on me,” he ordered.

Sheila wrapped her arms about him, her palms pressing on the wool of his suit, feeling the lean line of his back and the rise and fall of those hard breaths.

There was too much white around his eyes and a little madness in them, as if he were certain that nothing was real.

“Say it again.”

It never occurred to her that she could refuse.

“Daddy.”

He kissed her. 

Her bones turned to water.

Her skin to ash.

With an effortless lift she was in his arms, “Upstairs?” he asked, pressing his forehead to hers as he broke the kiss like it was killing him to do so.

She nodded.

“Words,” he reminded her, “always use your words.”

“Take me up to my flat, Daddy, take me up and put me to bed.”

“Yes, my little girl,” he answered, gently kissing her forehead.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who want to play at home, the songs are : 
> 
> Little Willy - Sweet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM6I-pmV0RA
> 
> Love Me or Let Me Be Lonely - Friends of Distinction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CXgSOYtmNs
> 
> Videos also chosen to give you an idea of what people are wearing... be afraid.
> 
> Forgot one! 
> 
> I Get the Sweetest Feeling - Jackie Wilson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boo_pRQn64E


	3. Isn’t It Odd That the Most Dangerous Places Are Always the Most Beautiful?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Sheila find themselves again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday again Caff! I hope I got what you wanted!

He’d been the one to run. The one to be uncertain. To be afraid - of what he wanted, of how much she was willing to give, of  _ them  _ together.

Now, again, Sheila had proved herself braver than he could ever be. Now it was his turn.

The first time Conrad had seen what he needed, what he  _ was _ , he had been a boy - seventeen barely - at a stag party for his cousin Edward. It was held in a terrible basement flat in Soho, crowded with young men in ties, sharing a plate of Saltines with canned cheese and one jar of olives. He’d drank too much vodka, then fashionable with the would-be young socialist set from Cambridge that Eddie ran with. The ceiling was so low he had bumped his head on the un-shaded lightbulb hanging above the make-shift bar in the kitchenette over and over again.

The walls were damp and the blue paint was all but rolling off of it. Someone had bought a marijuana cigarette from an American jazz musician and it was passed around with due reverence, though looking back Conrad was fairly certain that it was just a regular, hand-rolled fag adulterated with parsley or dried out broadleaf. He’d spent a lot of time trying to seem sophisticated, nodded and hmmming about politics he could barely follow, and talk of Sartre, who he had read for the first time recently and was feeling very full of himself that he could quote : 

“ _ Life begins on the other side of despair. _ ”

He had been bloody proud of that, as if he had had any idea what despair was when he was seventeen.

When the smoker reels were started up, shown on a no longer perfectly white sheet, James had been half dead on his feet, slightly ill, and very woozy. The first one, a woman who looked old enough to be his mother dancing and stripping to no music other than the flap of the projector and the cat calls from the party had barely registered with him where he swayed at the back of the room.

Then someone got up and he stole their chair before anyone else could, trying to keep his eyes open. There was a tatty velvet curtain as a backdrop for a woman, more attractive than the woman in the first film, with a stern quality, who was lounging on a sofa in a dressing gown trimmed with feathers. She was clearly meant to be wealthy, though the set looked about as rough as the basement he was in at the moment. After a few seconds a girl, this one very pretty and pert looking, came in wearing a very short, very low cut version of a maid’s uniform, complete with a frilly apron and a big feather duster.

There was still no sound but it was clear the mistress was displeased with the maid’s work. They argued in silence for a few moments, when suddenly the older woman grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her over her lap, lifted her skirt, lowered the also frilly panties she was wearing and proceeded to spank her.

At seventeen Conrad could be aroused by almost anything, from a girl’s garters to a not so still breeze. His virginity was only recently in his past, and he having gone to Eton was not unfamiliar with the idea of naughty spankings even if he’d never actually seen one before. 

But the seeing of it. Watching the girl silently kick and cry out, wearing herself out as the woman methodically, with a not unkind expression and a watchful eye, slowly smacked her over and over, stopping now and then to tenderly rub her hand over the darkening flesh. 

Then, afterward, the girl stood, sniffling and straightening her clothing, giving them the flash of her clearly wet pubic hair that was forever seared on his brain. She curtsied to the woman, who then lightly tapped her own cheek. 

The girl leaned over and kissed her there, and she could plainly be seen to say, “Thank you.”

It was halfway through the next reel - some half remembered business about a door to door salesman - when he could find his legs, staggering out of the dank, mold-smelling flat, up the stairs, and around to the privacy of a dirty alley where three hard, shaking-handed strokes had him coming with an intensity that had him doubled over, hanging onto the back wall of a bakery, nearly sobbing himself.

The next morning he woke with the worst hangover of his young life and a sense of himself as a foul, perverted degenerate that perfectly coincided with the already growing idea that he was nothing but another useless child of privilege. 

The same depressing idea that had sent generation after generation of the men of his family into the military to die, hoping that they might expiate the guilt of having an everything that they had done nothing to earn.

When he’d met Sheila those few years later, just finishing at university and ready for his military career, at first it had just a little fun between them. Attraction, deep attraction, mixed with the uncertainty of the times had probably put them into bed together earlier than was the norm. But he’d been unable to keep his hands off of her.

The way she took pleasure had driven him mad. Her work-strong body growing tenser and tighter as he wound her like a gold watch - plucking and nipping at her nipples until she started moving helplessly, rubbing a fingertip between her legs as she spread them ever wider until she was completely open and her little pink cunt throbbed in time to her heart, sinking between the cradle of her thighs so he could drag his cock back and forth along her slit as she writhed, trying to move so he would slide into her but he held her by the hip so he could tease her until she was incoherent. 

It wasn’t that they were only ever in bed together. They were together every second they could manage to be, when he wasn’t at Oxford, and later Imjin Barracks, he was at the Mare to gather her. There was little enough to do in town, so he would sometimes take her dancing or to the cinema in Chichester, or over to Oxford to see a band and have a meal. Otherwise, if she couldn’t get away from the pub for more than an hour, or she was too tired, it was enough to walk with her talking, to sit in on the green, his head in her lap, reading to each other from whatever book one of them was currently fascinated with.

Yet even if it were just a quick knee trembler in one of the sheep-runs off of the town square, or the one time they had two full nights together when Bernard had gone on a fishing holiday, they always ended up back in bed as quickly as they could.

For some reason, reasons he did not choose to observe with any care back then, he found himself able to resist his own need to orgasm longer with Sheila than with any other woman, not because he wanted her less, but because he  _ needed  _ her so much more. 

Any time in bed he did not make her beg he felt he had failed both of them.

The first time she had come more than once, her body latching around him, her heels dug into his ass, they had stopped and stared at each other in shock. They had been so goddamn naive they hadn’t known it was possible. Then Sheila had burst out laughing.

Joyful and a little embarrassed, James had pulled out and rolled onto his side so he could lean over her, squinting with mock anger and imitating the most authoritarian professor he’d had at uni, said, “Now, what is so funny,-” he had started to say ‘miss’ but it came out ‘little girl.’

Sheila had stopped laughing, her eyes going big and her lashes fluttering over those soft, blue eyes of hers, but said nothing.

That wasn’t good enough. Not then. 

“I expect an answer when I ask you a question,” he said. 

If at that moment she’d laughed again, or said something like, “Your expression, sir,” with that sassy tone she used when one of the punters in the pub got too fresh with her, then he would have smiled and rolled back onto her.

But she had said, “Nothing, daddy,” her voice small.

A lump formed in his throat and his lungs were burning and his heart, oh his heart hurt like an unexpected wound hurts, like a blow from nowhere. His voice rough, he said, “Nothing is not an answer. One more time, what is so funny? You know that if you refuse to answer I am going to have to take you over my knee.”

The words left him like jagged glass. It was like he was bleeding all over her and she either couldn’t see or didn’t care.

Or, most horribly of all, didn’t mind.

She just stared at him, her hands in little fists over her chest that was still flushed and pink, and she shook her head back and forth, unable to answer but never, for a moment, looking away.

Her pupils so wide that he could barely see the least line of blue around them.

When he lifted her, he expected her to laugh then, to protest, to push him away. Rather, lax and shivering, no, he thought, he remembered, trembling rather than shivering, she let him arrange her as he liked. His cock nestled in the soft swell of her belly, his thighs supporting her, she wrapped her arms around his calf and buried her face against the side of his leg as he brought his hand down for the first time.

He ignored the voice that told him that this was wrong. That he was a despicable monster to treat her so. To treat anyone so. 

That was a lie. He didn’t ignore it. He just didn’t care. Could not care. And he didn’t feel like a monster because he was far from out of control. He was completely composed as his hand came down on her pretty,  _ trembling _ bottom. 

A small squeal of pain and something else squeaked from her as she clutched him tighter, nuzzling his fine hairs on his calf. Accepting.

He loved her.

He had loved her before that, of course, had loved her for just ages and ages at that point. Or months because when you were that young months were ages. 

“Stay very still for me, little girl, still as you can, so I won’t hurt you here,” he said, cupping between her legs very tenderly.

Then he knew, he could hurt her there, too. That he could strike that tender, private place, and Sheila would let him. She would look at him with those pretty blue eyes, guileless as she looked now, and let him. Later, when he left her, it was that look that drove him away. He told himself that it was because there was something wrong with her for not seeing that what they were doing was sick. 

He told himself that because he wasn’t ready to admit he was afraid, uncommitted, a child, and she was far beyond him. He didn’t trust her the way she trusted him, and he sure as hell didn’t trust himself not to hurt her as they played more and more.

But that first day he was firm, controlled, steady. He raised his hand and dropped it, not hard, just enough to pink her skin, to leave a pretty pattern of his long fingers, to make the round skin jump, to make her jump, to make her move against him. 

Her tears fell onto his foot. 

Her cunt wept against his thigh, the softness of her being tapped lightly by his so eager cock. 

Each blow ended with him wrapping those long fingers over her, squeezing for just a second, thinking, “ _ Mine _ .”

Now and then - for it seemed like he had spanked her for hours though it could not have been more than a dozen or so strokes of his palm - he would touch her very, very softly between her legs, barely brushing her adorable clit where it was nestled in her curls, and she would keen and try to stay very still and be his good, good girl.

She was a good girl. Such a good girl, he thought as he now these years later followed her upstairs to that same flat, that same room. She had been his good, good girl, his princess, and afterwards, she had clung to him and sobbed her heart out while he rocked her, murmuring against her hair, while she said, “I’m sorry, daddy, I’m sorry,” over and over. Crying out for every man who’d put his hands on her, making her feel soiled, that she’d had to laugh off. Crying for all of the years that would be before her would be more of the same. Crying because she could, because he’d made her feel safe.

She was his good girl.

For the next two weeks, they played and explored. He was her daddy, and she was so good, doing as she was told, only sassing when she wanted him to pay special attention to her. Games they both instinctively knew how to play but he didn’t understand how to win.

Sometimes she would forget rules he set for her - that she must remember to eat whilst working, that she had to not smoke too much, that she should not encourage the punters to flirt with her, save the sons of the lads, who they knew could be trusted. 

But she always took her punishments and said she was sorry, still with that look in her eyes, even when they were red with tears.

And he was a filthy coward. 

She was his good girl and after those two weeks, he started to hate himself, seeing what they had as ugly and twisted. She was his good girl and he was a filthy coward and he left her alone. 

His little girl alone for all of those years.

He’d wanted to die so many times in Vietnam, and it had taken him until he was on Skull Island to know that it wasn’t because he was hollow. He had seen Kong fighting to protect the people of his island. When he joined Weaver in her quest to save the great beast he knew that every soldier he had saved had been nothing but a blind, an attempt to atone. 

On the boat afterwards, he had laughed himself sick and then sobbed, knowing it had taken something so impossible to make him grow up and face his responsibilities.

Conrad unconsciously registered the differences in the flat. It was no longer Bernard’s place where his daughter lived with him. It was Sheila’s. Full of her touches. Less chintz and lace left over from her mother and grandmother’s decorating, no more relics of the pub. There was a new hi-fi, with stacks of records. Things were neat enough, if not entirely clean. The ashtrays were full, and there were a few teacups here and there in the living room. Next to the door were two pairs of shoes that had clearly been kicked off of sore, tired feet and left. 

Laundry was folded and left on the couch.

One of the large plants that framed the window looking out into the square was nearly dead.

Evidence of a harried life. 

He’d see to that later.

When he started towards what had been her bedroom, she laughed a bit. The sound of it startled him. It was a woman’s laugh, throaty and very sexy. Sheila may have still been his little girl, but she was also a woman now. There were ten years between them and they clearly had things to talk about.

“Sorry,” he said, putting her down. 

Now she looked at him curiously. Her expression half wary, half that of his eager little girl who always couldn’t wait for daddy to put her to bed. “Is something wrong?” she asked tentatively. Then she looked frightened. “I forgave you too fast, didn’t I? You started thinking about it and now you think I’m some mad cow whose going to kill you in bed or some other thing.” She spoke quickly, the words falling out of her mouth, “I didn’t forgive you for ever. Just not forever. If anyone so much as mentioned you in the pub I would tear them up for sport and then cry all night. My dad was ready to go over to Vietnam and kill you, he was, he really was. I even married Barry, you remember Barry? But then...”

Conrad thought he was going to be sick. Not that he had expected Sheila to not be with anyone else. He had no business thinking about her at all. But  _ Barry? _ That useless bastard? How had Bernard allowed it? 

He imagined the state Sheila had been in when he’d left her, and then he tried to imagine Bernard or anyone else stopping her from doing anything. Of course they hadn’t been able to. That was his job.

Disappointed anger that Sheila - dressed in white, and probably as beautiful as springtime - had walked down the aisle to standing next to bloody, weak, namby-pamby Barry surged through him, prickling up and down his arms. 

“Barry? I would have thought you would have better taste than that.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them but did not take them back. They weren’t wrong.

Sheila could not believe that he was daring to be angry with her. She crossed her arms. “Well, he did have the advantage of being here, and wanting me,” she sounded mulish and looked down, trying to will herself angry as well. But nothing came. She’d been lonely for him for too long, and certain he was dead, and the relief and the need and the way her whole self swayed toward him made her strong enough to forgive.

He put the curled side of his finger under her chin, tipping it up. “I don’t know what to spank you for first, that sassy tone or that you married that prat.”

Stepping away from his touch, she walked away from her former bedroom door, “It didn’t last long. Only six months.”

“Then only six spanks,” he said, following her. “But that will be for another day.”

“How many do you get for running off to play soldiers? And leaving me like I was nothing?”

The tall bastard leaned in the low hallway, “If I were a different sort of man I would to take you to the front window, lean you out of it, and paddle you there for any straggling drunks and dogwalkers to see, and then fuck the nastiness out of you.” His tone was calm and reasonable as he said mad, unreasonable things. “Make you thank me over and over as I pinch those pretty nipples raw just the way you like, so everyone in town will hear how my pretty good girl begs her daddy to be able to come.”

She clutched at the wall as she walked away from him, her nails gouging the heavy layers of old, white paint and turning back to watch his face as he spoke so calmly in his deep, nerve soothing voice.

He continued, “But even if I cannot prove to both of us that I can be a good daddy to you, the daddy you deserve, I would still never do such a thing, for you are my precious girl.” He dropped his head, but raised his eyes, “Though there may be a part of both of us that might want such a thing.”

Sheila had never been ashamed of what was between them, but even so, she was a little embarrassed at how wet and soaked and needy she was both at the idea that they both might want it, and that he would choose not to do it for the sake of both of their better angels. 

Tears prickled at her eyes. “You are the only daddy I would ever want.”

Now he looked down, a great sigh heaving his shoulders as he bit his lips, his beautiful, strong face agonized. “I am humbled, and I promise you that you will never, ever have reason to be sorry for it.”

She turned before the door to the master bedroom, such as it was, and faced him whilst holding the knob behind her back, “This is my room now.”

“Is that what you laughed about?” he asked, his deep voice now amused.

“Yes. I mean, I loved Dad, but it isn’t a shrine. I was able to get a proper-sized bed, for one. And get rid of the wallpaper.”

When she’d bought the bed, so large the moving men had barely gotten it in and much too dear, especially when she’d counted in the new linens, she’d been thinking of James. Of his poor feet dangling off of the end of her small, maidenly bed. 

Because she’d been waiting, even if she thought he was gone forever.

He walked in before her, that perfect, military straightness to his back making her want to cling to the strength of it. With a very naughty grin, he shook the foot and headboards. “Sturdy,” he admired. 

“Time to undress for bed, little girl. Those high boots and that dress are too grown-up for you. I need to see your pretty, pink places. I’ve missed them. I need to kiss each of them hello. Hello to my little girl’s sweet nipples. Hello to my little girl’s rosebud. Hello to my little girl’s tender, wet pussy.”

The way he kept calling her little girl over and over was hypnotic, his voice soft and velvety and gentle. 

A hot thrill went through Sheila, as she hastily bent to unzip her boots. James t’sked at her, “Now, how am I to prove myself to you are going to do my tasks for me?” He sat on the bed, legs spread. 

She desperately wanted to sink to the ground and put her head on one of his thighs. Before she could he tapped the place she wanted to lay her cheek, “Boot, please.”

Careful not to stab him with the heel she complied, grabbing his shoulder for balance. He slowly unzipped it and pulled it free. For a half a moment she was distracted from her arousal by the relief. The boots were sexy, but they hurt as bad as they looked good on her. When he took the second one off she moaned.

For a moment he froze, his lip lifting in a snarl, his eyes burning into hers. “Careful, little one, more of those noises and daddy is going to bend you over that sturdy footboard and fuck you raw. I want more for you tonight. I want more for  _ us _ .”

The intensity of his gaze made her feel small and surrounded. 

He took off her other boot, staring into her eyes the whole time. She bit her lower lip and rocked her shoulders back and forth, trying to drop her eyes but not being able to.

“Am I making you feel shy, precious?”

Sheila nodded. Then, seeing the stern line of his jaw, added, “Yes, daddy.”

“A little girl must never be shy with her daddy,” he said, standing so they were very close together. Without the three inches the boots gave her he towered over her. He reached a long arm behind her and unzipped her red knit dress, the one that the boys liked and that the lads thought was scandalous, with its short skirt and snug fit. 

His breath hissed in, making his lip snarl like something feral.

Underneath that sexy, intimidating frock, where no one would see since it had been ages since she’d brought anyone home for even a quick one, she wore pink cotton panties with a satin ribbon that had a little bow in back, and a bra covered in lace and tiny, pink cherries. 

James touched the peak of her nipple through the cotton and lace, cupping her side and letting the pad of his thumb rub over it. “This is so pretty. So perfect for you.”

Sheila’s eyes closed, just drinking in the feeling. There was a hard pinch to remind her to look at him, but when she started to say she was sorry, he leaned down, his body so large, shading hers, “It’s alright, precious. It’s overwhelming for me, too,” he admitted, kissing her.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on her toes and opened her mouth and let him stroke her tongue with his as he undid her bra and then knelt before her. “Even prettier,” he breathed as he took one nipple into his mouth while reaching up to stroke her hair.

Sheila writhed against his mouth, shifting from foot to foot, wanting to make him take his clothes off, make him lay down, make him hurry. But she knew that trying to hurry him would only result in a sore bottom and more waiting, no matter how much he said he had to make up to her.

Daddies made the rules, after all.

His loving her breasts had her clutching his suited shoulders to keep from sliding to the ground. The feel of his smile against her delicate skin, making a little stubble rasp there, made her shift again and again, wanting to rub her legs together and knowing, remembering, that wasn’t allowed unless he told her she could.

“Here,” he put his hand between her legs, tickling cruelly as he went, pressing. Sheila whimpered, feeling weak and needing more. When she tried to move against that firmness he moved his hand away so it barely brushed her wet panties. Frustrated, she tried again and again, he evaded her. 

Now she whimpered in earnest, “Please…”

James circled her nipple with his tongue and then looked up at her, his eyes pretending innocence, “Isn’t that enough, little girl? Do you want to dance on daddy’s fingers?”

Almost crying, she nodded, saying, “Yes, please, daddy.”

Now he nodded standing, which made a few tears leak from her eyes. The small part of her mind that wasn’t deep within their game thought, “ _ Ten years, you teasing bastard. Give me your hand, give me your mouth, give me your cock. Give me something _ .”

But his good little girl waited as patiently as she could.

He kissed her on the forehead, “I don’t deserve you. Never doubt that I know that.”

With graceful speed he removed his coat and tie, unbuttoned his top button, and toed off his shoes. For a moment he stood there, his own breath heaving, looking down at her. Through the fine stuff of his shirt she could see the shape of his arms, his chest, powerful but trim. Like a piece of ancient Greek statuary, yet warm and vital. 

Through his expensive suit trousers, the long, thick line of his cock was apparent, throbbing softly under her gaze. Truly unable to speak, remembering the feel of it in her, how the first time had been agony, but how soon it came to be that the only time she felt whole was when it was in her, filling her, finding her, she asked for permission with her eyes.

James gave her a short nod.

With a trembling hand, she touched him through the thin wool. Her hand felt so small against its size, but it jumped at her touch. He hissed once and then took her hand away from it and laid her on the bed, taking his place at her side, sliding his fingers under the frilly waistband of her panties, his thumb stroking her navel as he went. 

Sheila was practically hyperventilating, her chest heaving when he finally touched her clit. Her cunt squeezed on nothing and she knew she was going to come almost immediately when he lay his head next to hers on the pillow and whispered, “Not yet, princess. Not yet. Lay still and let daddy get to know you here again, your pretty, secret place.”

Trying to stay still, Sheila fisted her hand and kept her arms at her sides, willing her legs to not fidget and move as he stroked deeper, playing with her hair, then into her wet. 

With exquisitely cruel lovingness he petted and stroked and toyed with her, his hand intentionally limited by the cotton of her panties, all of the while whispering closely in her ear, his honey voice purring and the heat of his breath teasing, as he told her over and over how proud he was of her, of all she had done without him, of how she was his strong, brave girl and his sweet, small princess, and how he would never leave her again, that he would make her happy. So happy.

The gorgeousness of it, and the need, and the intense, drowning desire as he would bring her so close and then pull away, to pat her softly between the legs and tell her that she needed to rest, that she was getting too worked up, and then, when her breath would start to calm, he would start over again.

Only the whiteness of his knuckles on his free hand gave her any clue that he was having trouble restraining himself.

Finally, worn and wrung out like an old bit of laundry, Sheila felt her muscles go lax and she turned her face towards him.

His beautiful face, so close to hers.

She reached out and touched his cheek. “Thank you, daddy,” she managed to say.

His eyes closed for a moment, and then opened on fire.

He ripped those little panties straight off of her and plunged three fingers deep into her hungry, dripping cunt, fucking her relentlessly as he leaned up to loom over her body, to watch ever twitch and opened mouth, broken breath. 

Sheila, insensible to anything now but the need in his eyes and the need in her cunt, planted her feet and began to fuck against his hand. “Now, my princess, my little darling,” he ordered.

The spasm, the echoing pleasure that hurt and then became wonderful, the arch of her back as her hips rose from the mattress, went on and on as he insisted, he commanded, he acted to turn one orgasm into two, into gushing, into more and more until she fell back and he gave her mercy, wrapping himself around her, the wool of trousers and the lawn of his shirt warm and wonderful against her skin.

“More,” she demanded, sounding spoiled and not caring.

James tried to chuckle indulgently, but he was too far gone himself. With fine trembles moving through his muscles now and then he stripped the rest of the way.

The sight of his body, now bare to her, that same familiar length of leg and torso and arm, but now covered in lean, hard muscle turned him into a stranger for a moment. Then he settled in the cradle of her legs, slowly, too slowly, not slowly enough, thrust his fat, delicious cock into her, and she knew him again.

She knew him completely.

Conrad’s thrusts were at first elegant, long retreats and entries, getting her used to him again, giving him time to gather himself. 

It didn’t work.

Soon, so soon, but not soon at all, ten years in the making, he was ratcheting on her, pulling her hair back so he could bite her neck, her shoulder, telling her to come and to take him and that he was home and she was home and they would always be home together.

Her heels kicked hard into his back like she was having a temper tantrum, wanting to hurt him a little, wanting him to heal them both.

Out of control and yet aware of everything, he saw Sheila’s climax approaching again. With a long scoop his hips he thrust upwards, hitting places deep in her that had her thrashing and flooding the bed, screaming ‘daddy’ over and over.

Christ fucking hell!

Undeserving, but taking her anyway, James let himself free, the pleasure of his little girl, of their world, of his long-denied body, seethed out of him as he cried out, “My love.”

When he pulled out of her she sobbed at the shock of it, “I love you daddy, I love you, I love you, stay with me, to don’t go…” as she tried to pull him back into her, where she knew he would always be with her.

“Shhh… my sweetheart, my love, I’m here, I’m here, I’ll always be here…”

She needed water, food probably, but for the moment they both needed this more than anything.

“You said that woman was a friend from work…” Sheila asked when she came back to herself, finding her head on James' chest as he stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head over and over, telling her how bloody wonderful she was and how proud he was to be her daddy. “Where would that be, then?”

He was ever so slightly annoyed, and snorted a bit, “That is the first thing you think of at a moment like this?” Then he knew that he was being an ass, considering, so he kissed her again. “Why?” he asked more gently.

She turned over and leaned up on her elbows, giving him a good stare, “You said you were never leaving me again, but since you seem to have a job elsewhere I’d like to know how that’s possible.” Then she smiled and gave him a quick kiss back.

James considered how to explain the impossible to someone as practical as Sheila. How much he could explain, considering how deeply secret and secure Monarch was.

Then he thought, Fuck Monarch. Sheila was a born publican. Seven generations of her family had kept the secrets of the men and women who had come to the White Mare. It was in her blood and good enough for him.

Anything about her was more than good enough for him.

“It would probably be easier to show than tell, darling. Fancy a holiday in Scotland? I’m certain you could use a break and the lochs are excellent fishing this time of year.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know much about the history of how d/s, specifically DD/lg, relationships would have been at this time - were there rules, how did the dynamics play out in that time? But since James and Sheila are not part of a larger community they, like me, are finding their way as they go along so apologies for anything I might have gotten wrong.


End file.
